Nick Cave - We Call Upon the Author lyrics

rate me

What we once thought we had we didn't, and what we have now will never be that way again

So we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop)

Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind

The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind

I ask them to desist and to refrain

And then we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop)

Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose

And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code

We shook our fists at the punishing rain

And we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop)

He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune

There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon

Well, he knew exactly who to blame

And we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop)

Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!

(Doop doop doop doop dooop)

Well, I go guruing down the street, young people gather round my feet

Ask me things, but I don'r know where to start

They ignite the power-trail ssstraight to my father's heart

And once again I call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)

We call upon the author to explain

Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?

I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it's fucked up and he is a fucker

But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain

I call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)

Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious diseease

Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions

Well, it does in your brain

And we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)

Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window (Hey Doug, how you been?)

Brings me back a book on holocaust poetry complete with pictures

Then tells me to get ready for the rain

And we call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)

I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix

Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!

He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain

We call upon the author to explain

(Doop doop doop doop dooop ...)

Down in my bolthole I see they've published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish

"The waves, the waves were soldiers moving". Well, thank you, thank you, thank you

And again I call upon the author to explain

Yeah, we call upon the author to explain

Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!